On the plane

The flight with Air China from Stockholm went off as planned and I got a seat at the very far back of the plan in row 61. A family with a baby behind, but the baby was unusually quiet.

We got the food quite quick after take off, of course rice and pork stew for main course. After all - this is Air China. Better than average in terms of airline food. Oddly enough the drinks were served half an hour after we got the food.

 

Then I checked the first 5 minutes of 4 different films, but was too tired to concentrate, so I tried to get some sleep. The seat next to me was vacant so I tested some different settings like this:

Dozed off a bit and changed the position 20 times before I sat as as usual and realized that I always follow this process - testing lots of different positions - before I give up and try to sleep sitting up.

However, it did not manage to go to sleep anyway so I tried to watch a movie again - Django Unchained - which was really entertaining.

Interesting start of the trip ...

I arrived at Arlanda Terminal 2 in good time, checked in on a vending machine and saw that the plane to Paris, where I would change, was delayed an hour. I went to the check-in counter and asked (maybe a little bit naive) weather the plane possibly would wait us, since the delay would give me only 15 minutes for changing plane in Paris. Clearly they do not, but the lady said that if we miss the flight to Tokyo Air France will pay for hotels, etc., in Paris, and then I take the next plan tomorrow night = a whole day of delay.

Not exactly what I wanted, so I ran away to the service desk and asked if they could book me on another flight to Paris. But no, there was nothing. I explained that I really have to be in Tokyo on Tuesday. After a couple of minutes, the man at the service counter said that a possible solution was that I should try to catch an Air China aircraft to Beijing that would take off in 50 minutes, and then take a flight from there to Tokyo after a five-hour stop over in Beijing. I would then arrive in Tokyo 19:15 on Tuesday, just over an hour later than my original itinerary. However, it was unclear whether the check-in was already closed, so he advised me to run from Terminal 2 to Terminal 5 as fast as I could while he called and gave them a heads up that I was on my way.

I ran like a madman and arrived in a few minutes, had just enough time to check in the bag before they closed check-in.

The staff calls and announces that there will be one more bag.

Sweaty as hell after running FAST, but I managed to get on the flight!